OpinionBan not stopping mainlanders from buying more homes

Have a chat with someone on the mainland and eventually the topic will turn to property.

The passion for investing in "bricks and mortar" is unlikely to be diminished by the central government's restrictive home purchase policy, which bars residents from buying more than two homes since early 2011 in an attempt to curb the overheated property market.

But this is hardly a problem for the bold and ingenious. To them, the back door is always there if the direct route of buying a third or fourth home is not an option.

One mainland contact says an increasing number of "creative" couples are turning to divorce - sometimes using fraudulent documents - to avoid restrictions on the purchase of more than two flats.

They have more bullets in their arsenal.

Not content with "divorce for convenience", they also use their respective parents, most of whom may not own properties, to buy a third or even fourth home.